


easy to please but hard to impress

by JennaCupcakes



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Francis Crozier engages in negative thought patterns while balls-deep inside Fitzjames, Hate Sex, M/M, Overstimulation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, and other fun stories, unrealistic refractory periods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27726109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: The first winter is always the worst. Francis knows this. Fitzjames is about to learn.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 32
Kudos: 95
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	easy to please but hard to impress

**Author's Note:**

> For my Terror Bingo square ‘tired of being in pain’, we have Francis trying to fuck his way out of heartbreak. Sorry for the fact that this is just unrepentant smut.
> 
> Title from Dessa's [Warsaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Tp-64DZ4A).

Francis’s limbs were pleasantly loose, un-knotted by a bone-deep warmth, as he went the short step from his bunk to his desk and poured himself a generous glass of whiskey. The planks were cold under his feet—his toes curled in his socks where he stood—but the alcohol had a pleasant warmth to it, and it was just the kind of indulgence that was in order.

He did not turn until he’d chased the burn of the first glass with a second couple of fingers. Even then, he lingered, hoping against hope that he might be able to draw out this moment of uncomplicated bliss a little longer. As though he hadn’t long since learnt to put a finger to the wound, to inoculate himself against the burning sting of it.

He turned.

Fitzjames’s hair was fanned across Francis’s pillow, the strands dark stains on linen that was no longer as white as it had been six months ago when they set out. He was turned on his side, away from Francis, but for the rest, he still lay like Francis had left him—trousers around his ankles, shirt rucked up, exposing muscular thighs and a milky white backside. Francis swallowed when Fitzjames shifted, exposing the place where a trail of Francis’s spend had begun to trickle out of him in the time it had taken Francis to pour himself his whiskey. It made Francis’s prick—soft and sated as it was—twitch hungrily between his thighs, as though it still wanted to plunge itself into the warm and welcoming heat it had found there.

Fitzjames was close to dropping off, Francis suspected, if the slow and languid way he breathed was anything to go by. No small wonder, not with how eagerly he’d worked himself on Francis’s prick, arching into Francis’s thrusts and making all manner of noises when Francis slid deeper into him. Francis would be happy enough to leave him in the bunk—it saved him an uncomfortable conversation at any rate, for what did one say to one’s fellow officer after buggering him?—but Fitzjames hadn’t even had the good grace to do it on his own ship, and in his own bunk.

Francis felt something not quite like regret as he stepped back over to the bunk—melancholy, a well-practised reaction, for he already knew whatever relief he’d felt in the blissful few moments after stumbling out of the bunk was temporary. He settled on the edge of the bunk, perched awkwardly on the rail. Christ, he could still smell it in the air, the sweat and sticky musk of what they’d done.

He thought to shake Fitzjames awake but changed his mind at the last second. His hand landed on Fitzjames’s backside, much softer than intended: a caress, if one was inclined to be charitable towards Francis. He ran his fingers over the soft skin and hard muscle underneath, bruised only slightly where Francis had gripped tightly. Fitzjames gave a pleased, absent hum. Francis dipped his fingers lower, slipped them easily into Fitzjames.

Fitzjames startled, a shiver that ran through his whole body, and his eyes blinked open. He turned his head towards Francis with some difficulty, swallowing but saying nothing. Their eyes locked—an unmoving tableau of damning and damned.

Francis crooked his fingers.

He’d meant to feel how loose Fitzjames still was but to his surprise, the man made a wounded noise, his eyes flying open in a shock of pleasure. His prick jumped. Francis licked his lips.

“Francis,” Fitzjames warned, near musical in his voice. Francis stilled his hand.

“I can stop,” he said, but did not withdraw his fingers. Fitzjames’s throat worked as he swallowed—chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing like he had to work through the words before he could spit them at Francis.

“I—”

Francis pushed his fingers deeper, twisting them slightly. It was satisfying to watch Fitzjames choke on the words he’d wanted to say. He kept his eyes on Francis though—looking, Francis thought, betrayed. The instinct Francis felt at that was familiar—fucking Fitzjames had scratched an itch, but the truly pleasurable sensation was the ice-pure satisfaction in his gut when taking Fitzjames down a peg.

“Had enough already?” He kept his fingers where they were for the moment and found himself rewarded by Fitzjames’s squirming. “After all, it was you who came to my ship, gin-drunk and throwing yourself at me.”

The indignation in Fitzjames’s eyes seemed fuelled by a similar endless well to the well of anger Francis possessed.

“I’m sorry for insulting your sensibilities,” he spat with a lot more _hauteur_ than a man with a pair of fingers up his arse should be able to muster. “Do you feel I’ve not gone about courting you the proper way?”

Francis scoffed. He went to withdraw his hand, but before he could, Fitzjames wrapped his long bony fingers around Francis’s wrist. Francis watched him as his throat worked.

“Do go on,” he said at length.

He closed his eyes as Francis took up a slow, exploratory rhythm—hoping, perhaps, to salvage some of his dignity by hiding what parts of himself he could, knowing rightly that Francis would gut him at the slightest sign of vulnerability. By God, he was beautiful. Francis hadn’t had the stomach to admit it when Fitzjames invited himself to stay on Terror after dinner, resplendent in a dress uniform that was still spotless after months of being dragged out for one interminable dinner after another. But he’d felt it, even then: the finger-twitching desire to find out what Fitzjames would look like underneath it, were Francis to take his offer seriously. Francis had never been a man to seek this kind of solace, even in the dark heart of the Arctic or under the unrelenting, distant Antarctic sun. Others could say what they wanted about his character, but Francis Crozier had gone to the most distant parts of this planet without seeing his spirit broken.

No, it had taken a woman for that.

Like all lovers, Francis thought himself singular in his heartbreak. The special kind of humiliation he’d had to bear—to be loved, and still cast aside—weighed on him. He felt marked. The depth of that disgrace—and the equally fierce desire to restore whatever he could of his dignity—surely explained why he’d not been able to refuse Fitzjames, even against his better judgement. For when else would he find himself with this sort of opportunity: someone beautiful, with an accent as crisp as a winter’s first snowfall and all the right connections, asking Francis politely to ruin him?

And Fitzjames did come apart ever so prettily. Francis watched where his fingers dove into his body and came away slick and shining. Fitzjames’s rim was red around the blunt length of them, clenching in time with the hitching of Fitzjames’s breath.

“Is it good?”

Why had he asked that? He felt the blood rush to his face. It wasn’t like—by God, Fitzjames had come here to be fucked, not to bolster up the shaky card-house of Francis’s self-esteem. He felt caught out when Fitzjames raised an eyebrow at him—Francis desperately wished that Fitzjames would stop looking at him like he was effortlessly seeing through Francis’s bluster to the pathetic and shrivelled core of him.

Fitzjames shifted; bore further down on Francis’s fingers. He made another choked-off sound as he did and Francis felt a painful resurgence of interest between his legs—Fitzjames’s body arched off the bed, and his spent prick stirred. Francis wondered what it might be like to take him into his mouth, but the angle was not convenient, and Francis did not feel like exposing just how much of Fitzjames’s depravity he shared.

It should be enough that his own body was already in mutiny against him—his prick, which should have been sated beyond rising for the remainder of the night was hardening again against his thigh. The fact that Francis wanted to wish it away so desperately only seemed to harden—if one was inclined towards such wordplays—the organ’s resolve.

It was no matter. Fitzjames might accept a second time what he’d so insistently requested the first. That Francis did not comprehend why Fitzjames might want him did not diminish the evidence before him.

Francis took himself in hand with his left. The friction on his member so soon after spending was too much; had him shiver and bite back a hiss that would have laid him bare to Fitzjames’s mockery. Already he was aching, straining towards where his fingers were currently keeping Fitzjames poised on his own edge of too much, too soon. His spend had dried on the sheets; a darker stain of white against white, but Fitzjames was already, or perhaps still, leaking, half-hard prick drooling obscenely.

“Christ,” Fitzjames mumbled. His lips shaped themselves clumsily around the word—droll, almost, how desire so undid him. Francis felt himself approaching the end of his own forbearance. The watch would change soon, and Fitzjames might even be missed on his own ship. Who knew what he got up to over on Erebus—editing a ship’s gazette or putting on plays; Francis had heard him mooning about Parry’s days enough to know who Fitzjames’s polar heroes were. He’d refrained from reminding Fitzjames that he’d been to the Arctic with Parry. He was saving that one for a special occasion.

Picturing Fitzjames’s affronted face fanned the simmering flame in Francis’s gut and he twisted his fingers, pushed them forward with determination. Fitzjames groaned, his whole body rocking with the shock of it. Francis abruptly realised he’d used up the last of his patience.

He pulled out his fingers, leaving Fitzjames gasping. The oil and remnants of Francis’s leavings provided what little slick he spread over his prick before shoving at Fitzjames’s hip, turning him fully on his stomach. He made quite the picture like that—here was the fine figure of a man who had walked across Mesopotamia, who’d scaled the walls of Zhenjiang and—regrettably—lived to tell the tale. Francis dwarfed him easily in this narrow bunk, the bulk of his body towering over him.

He gripped himself at the root as he guided himself into Fitzjames. He bent himself over Fitzjames’s back until he was neatly aligned with the man, bore his hips down and savoured the sensation of Fitzjames opening to him.

“Knew you’d be good at this,” Fitzjames panted as Francis seated himself. “Prick like that. Christ, it barely fits your uniform.”

The words registered dimly. Francis was overtaken by a clutching heat, drawing him in. He pulled out slowly, feeling sweat pearl on his forehead and his neck. He was half-sure he’d never before felt this warm—not in Italy, not in Rio. Fitzjames breathed out a laugh as Francis shoved his prick back into him _—“Oh yes, just like that”—_ and though Francis couldn’t see much of his face, what he did see was a creased forehead and the edge of a distracted grin. Feral.

This was a bad idea. It was a bad idea, but it felt good and Christmas was approaching with Francis waking every day thinking he’d die before the year was out. He shouldn’t have come back to the Arctic—what was here for him besides the same old darkness for new, younger faces? Franklin’s confidence they’d conquer the Passage in a season had been disproven already. They were stuck on Beechey until the ice saw fit to release them in spring— _if_ it did at all.

Still, a man in a situation such as his should take his comforts where he could. Francis encouraged Fitzjames’s hips up with fingers wrapped around the bone of them. He slipped one arm around Fitzjames’s midsection, pressed himself against Fitzjames back to chest. Fitzjames arched in his arm, writhing weakly as though testing Francis’s hold. It got him nowhere. He groaned weakly.

“Hold still now,” Francis said, and then he took up his rhythm again and Fitzjames, if anything, sounded even more desperate the second time around. The head of his prick, fat and heavy again, brushed against the fine hairs of Francis’s arm. He pressed his eyes closed, focussed only on the feeling of sinking into Fitzjames over and over again, the way it sent small shocks through Fitzjames’s body, but it was Fitzjames who finished first—mewling against the pillow, a shock of warmth against the arm Francis had wrapped around him.

“Christ—ah, God, _Francis_ —”

He fell silent as Francis’s rhythm didn’t abate, focussed on drawing hysteric little breaths as every push of Francis’s hips seemed to punch another shock out of his body, the muscles of his arse clenching tightly around Francis.

“God,” he whined again.

Francis growled, brought his other hand up to silence that incessant mouth by hooking two fingers roughly into the corner of it. Fitzjames made an offended noise, muffled now by Francis’s thick fingers. Francis’s thrusts became erratic, feeling his end just out of reach. But Christ, Fitzjames was hot wherever he opened to Francis. He could scarcely believe it.

Francis grunted heavily and stilled deep inside Fitzjames’s body as he spent, feeling the pulse of it more keenly the second time around that night. Fitzjames was whimpering in muffled sympathy at the feeling of Francis’s spend filling up his arse—a hot and sticky delight, Francis had to close his eyes and put his head down to keep from collapsing atop Fitzjames.

He withdrew his fingers from Fitzjames’s mouth. The came away wet, leaving a trail of spit down Fitzjames’s chin.

He would stay here. He wondered how long Fitzjames might let him. He hadn’t had time to savour it the first time around, the sweet clench of a tight channel after satisfying his desire. It felt—safe. Odd, to feel the desire to be so consoled.

Fitzjames stirred under him.

“Are you finished, then?”

“Won’t you give a man a minute’s peace?”

Francis withdrew—the moment had been ruined. Fitzjames was even wetter now than before, the rim of his hole an angry red. Francis watched it hungrily. He wondered, unbidden, what it might be like to put his mouth there—to taste what he’d left Fitzjames, to feel him squirm on his tongue.

His face reddened. He turned away as Fitzjames sat up, feeling as though the man might spy his thoughts and damn him for them. There were spots of colour on Fitzjames’s patrician face, his eyes dark. His hair was a mess, and he’d bitten his lip.

“Well,” Fitzjames said.

Francis knew then what would follow—Fitzjames undoubtedly had experience in this area, and if he didn’t, he at least had an idea how to go about this. He would say something smart, something that suggested a social grace Francis lacked, and Francis would resent him for the distance he could put between them even after Francis had fucked him beyond coherency.

“Best you leave now,” he said quickly, before Fitzjames could get another word in. “They’ll be missing you on Erebus.”

He stood, meaning to find his smallclothes. Fitzjames was still sat on the bed when he turned back, feeling somewhat more self-assured with some clothes on.

“Right,” he said, as though Francis’s gaze had shocked him out of a stupor.

Francis had been right—this was a mistake of the highest order. As Fitzjames fastened his trousers, Francis couldn’t help but feel like he’d crossed a line, done something that should have been left un-done. There was a price for everything.

Fitzjames lingered at the door to Francis’s cabin. “I hope I’ll see you again soon, Francis.”

“Since I’m unlikely to go anywhere, I expect it shall be the case.”

Fitzjames’s expression soured. Francis watched it turn like milk, powerless to do something about it. It rather ruined his handsome face. “Don’t strain yourself on my account.”

He left. Francis poured himself another glass of whiskey and pulled out his chair. The night was yet young. So very, very young.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving me a comment. I am also on [tumblr](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/veganthranduil).


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